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Saturday, March 13, 2010

AbigailJorgesmashed into a wall and broke
her right pinky, but she just shook her head and kept on running. She didn't
know what was after her, but she knew it had wings, and guns for hands, and
that it killed the six Chinese soldiers escorting her to the Philippine
Embassy, so she knew she had to run. And keep on running.

It was dark, and the alleyways were deserted. When she first came to
Beijing, almost a decade ago, dogs and cats and bums roamed these alleyways.
Now there was no one, no animal to be seen. True, she had been in prison for
the past six and a half years, but no society changed that fast in that short a
time.

No, if she learned anything from the Party, it was logic. And logic
told her that whatever was after her, came after the Chinese first.

She slipped on a can and landed on a puddle. A mix of blood and
burak entered her mouth. Her nose was broken.

She stood up and resumed running.

She heard something whirring behind her. The thing's wings.
She jumped over a pile of bricks and ran.

Today was the day the Union was going to get her back. That's why
they were transporting her to the Embassy. Extradition. She wondered what would
be less painful, torture in the Philippinesor extermination in China?
Running. Running was less painful.

The alleyway finally ended. The light at the end of the
tunnel was a two-storey brick wall she couldn't possibly scale. She looked to
her left and saw a locked wooden door. She looked to her right and saw a locked
metal door. She hurled herself to the left.

The door gave way on her second assault. Her eyes adjusted quickly,
they kept her in a bartolina in Chiang Kai Shek Prison at least once every
month as a joke. She saw stairs and not much else, just white sheets covering
what seemed to be boxes. She looked up, and saw light. There were windows on
the second floor. She could climb out of the them, drop down to another alley,
or head for the roof, to jump from building to building. The day the Union
retook Malacañang, and declared the Party, her Party, once more, a terrorist
group, Abigailjumped onto a helicopter that
took her to a sailboat that was heading to Macao. The rest of the Central
Committee was executed three days later at Plaza Miranda. She climbed up the
stairs.

When she reached the windows she stopped to catch her breath. She
examined her extremities. She had so many wounds. If she didn't get her leproxy
shots, she was going to die. And since she seemed to be the only person left
alive in Beijing, she knew she was going to die. Her only real options
were dying by the guns of her winged predator or letting her flesh eat itself.
She looked out the window. There was a fire escape. Above her were six more
flights to climb. Below her was the thing, its wings whirring, floating
a feet or two in the air. On top of its head was a searchlight. Or maybe its
head was a searchlight. Abigailclimbed onto the fire escape
and began her ascent.

"Don't look down, don't look down," she whispered. With
every other step she looked down. The thing remained where it was. Was it
inspecting something? Guarding? Waiting for someone? Resting? Abigailbanged her head on a window, and screamed. She
slammed her mouth shut and knelt in pain. Her forehead was bleeding, she had
cracked a tooth, and when she looked down to check on the thing, she didn't see
it. "Just a few more steps now," she whispered, "come on at
least die on high ground." In prison, one time, they experimented on her mind.
They made her believe she was a 20th century convict, about to face
death by lethal injection. It was cruel, and
traumatic, and evil, and right now Abigail wished she could go back to that one
time.

When she reached the roof, the thing was there.

Abigailfought to keep herself
upright. The thing's head was a searchlight, and it hurt her eyes, but she
didn't look away. She wanted to face her executioner, see what it truly was.

It was organic. Yes, it had a gigantic florescent bulb for a head,
and guns for hands, but its wings were feathered, and its torso and arms were
made of flesh. So were its thighs and legs. Its feet were metallic boxes. They
were blue.

The thing pointed a hand at her. Abigailprayed to Isis, prayed to be swiftly welcomed
to the next plane of existence. She was never much for religion, but she always
prayed. Before and after members of the Union tortured her, during the first
time they had her, during the Revolution. She prayed on the sailboat that
brought her to Macao, she prayed when a storm tossed it to and fro. She prayed
when she first arrived at Beijing. She prayed when Chinese agents finally
caught her, sleeping in an alleyway. She prayed in prison, especially during
her weekly shots and monthly trips to solitary confinement. And she prayed the
night she learned of the extradition. Isis, she thought, was a stupid name for
a God.

The forced of the explosion lifted her to the air and slammed her on
the roof. The thing was a ball of fire now, she saw, and its flames licked at
her feet. She dragged herself away.

Someone brought her to her feet. A human. A woman. Chinese. Her
clothes were black spandex, and she had a grenade launcher slung on her left
shoulder. "Can you run?" the woman asked in Mandarin.

Abigailstruggled to form words.
"Yes. But. Shots. Shots." She fell into her savior's arms. Just as
she lost consciousness, she realized she had spoken in English.

2. When Abigailopened her eyes the first
thing she saw was the woman's face. Her hair was in a ponytail, her lips were
pouting and she had a scar that ran across her forehead. The woman smiled and
said, "Which honorific do you prefer?"

"Ano?" Abigailasked. She closed her eyes for a few seconds.
"I mean," she searched for the Mandarin word, "what?" She
saw now that she was in a bed. Machines blinked and beeped around her, and an
iv was attached to her left arm. They were in a room painted white. The air
smelled like alcohol.

The woman stood beside the bed. "You may speak in English, if
you want, but I cannot understand that, that other language." She
put a folder on Abigail's stomach. "Which honorific do you prefer? Commander, or
Doctor?"

"I don't understand." Abigailunderstood.

The woman opened the folder and angled it so Abigailcould read its contents. "Are you not
this woman?"

Abigailclosed her eyes. It was
profile of her. Most probably the Union's. "Yes, yes that's me."

"Then which..."

"Doctor," Abigailsaid, "I'm no Commander. Not
anymore."

"Doctor Jorge," the woman said, "My name is Athena Tavoittelija.
Please do not ask me about my last name, I am uncomfortable talking about it.
More importantly, the Chinese people need your help." Athena flipped
through the profile's pages. She stopped on a page with a picture of a bomb
site. Abigailblinked. It was ManansalaCrater. "This, this is,
is this your work?" Athena asked.

Abigailgroaned. "I'm sorry, the
Chinese people need my help?"

"Doctor, Doctor," Athena shook the folder, "we do not
have time for this."

"Time for what? You want me to blow up a city, we don't have
time for that?"

Athena sighed. "Doctor, do you not remember the creature
chasing you?"

"The thing?"

"The creature."

It had wings! "I remember."

"Those creatures have overthrown the Chinese government. They
have exterminated almost three fourths of our population. We need your
help."

"What the hellfor? You have nuclear bombs,
don't you?" Abigailtried to lie on her side, to
face away from Athena. She didn't succeed. "I don't want anything to do
with this."

"Doctor, these creatures, we do not know what they are. Some
believe they are aliens. Some, fairies. Madness? Madness or not, what we do
know is that they have China trapped in some kind of bubble. We cannot
communicate with the outside world. They destroyed our planes, our boats, our
submarines. We believe that they are responsible for the disappearance of the
Americas. Those we have captured often speak of a Vanishing. But they will not
just vanish China. They will destroy it. They will destroy the whole world, you
must understand. Even the Philippinesis not safe."

"Fuck the Philippines, Ms. Tavoittelija. Fuck China, and fuckthose things. I thank you for
saving me, but really, how can you expect me to help a government that kept me
locked up for five years? And as for my country's safety. I would rather it be
destroyed rather than run by the Union."

"The Union, Doctor?"

"The Union. The people to whom I am being extradited."
Abigailrepeated her speech in her
head. She wasn't so sure of her Mandarin.

"We were extraditing you, Doctor, to Party territory."

"Ano?" Abigailtried to sit up. "What?"

"You have been incarcerated for eight years, Doctor, the Party
rules almost one eight of your country now. If it hadn't been for the Invasion,
you would be in Laguna, now."

Abigaildrooled. "No. No. You're
lying."

Athena brought out another folder. She put it on Abigail's
stomach. "For your reading pleasure. I will return in an hour. Please,
decide to help us by then. I am ordered to kill you if you do not comply."

3. Abigailbuilt the bomb. She rested
and healed herself for a month, and then with Athena's help transformed the hospital
room into a laboratory. The leproxy ate her legs, and there weren't any
wheelchairs around, so she was stuck inside the lab. But she got her weekly
shots so she didn't lose anymore limbs. Unlike the soldiers she heard about in
school and encountered during the Revolution, she didn’t feel like they were
still there. She had no fantasies, no phantom legs.

Athena was the only other person she spoke to, though different men
brought the machines and equipment she requested for to the room. They were not
all Chinese. Of course, Mudanjiang, so close to Vladivostok, had attracted
immigrants from around the world before the Invasion.

The thing about the things, she refused to call them
creatures, was that they had a superior defense technology. Their force field
protected their armored cavalry, their aircraft and their bases. This same
force field was used to bubble China away from the rest of the world. That's
why the nuclear bombs were useless. It would just exterminate the humans, not
the enemies.

The bubble disrupted China's virtual communications, so they didn't
have access to the Internetional. Athena brought Abigailbooks, real books, salvaged from ruins by
scavenging parties. They were mostly Mandarin translations of Filipino works.
Many were decades old, their pages torn and tattered by time and word eaters.
One was called Unopened Letter to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, advocating a kudeta to "overthrow the Philippine
aristocracy" and "modernize the Philippines." Another was called
Dictionary of the ManansalaLanguage, Volume Two. Its first page went, "I did not want to write an entertaining
book. I did not want to write an edifying book. I wanted to write a long book.
And as you, my dear reader, can clearly see, this is one long book. It is
longer than In Search of Lost Time. It is longer than The Man Without
Qualities. At last, we Filipinos have something be proud of." Between
the first page and the table of contents were praises from now long-dead
magazines. One described as "A surrealist stunt, a cross between Wikipedia
and a free association test, a blog before the coming of the Internet."

"Wasn’t Wikipedia a
ship?" she had asked Athena.

"It was an opera, I think."

She finished it in three days.

One time, Abigailno longer knew the difference
between night and day, they came across a design flaw they couldn't overcome.
After arguing for an hour, Athena said they should take a break. She lifted
Abigail off her chair and, as had become their practice, brought her to her
bed. "I will get us dinner," Athena said.

"Dinner? Evening? Is it evening?"

Athena looked around the lab. "Dinner, food. Whatever. What
kind of a language is this English, anyway, so obsessed with gluttony."

"Mandarin is worse, you have to admit."

Athena raised her eyebrows. She stared at Abigailfor a few moments. "Yes, yes," she
said in Mandarin. "I see you are right. I will get us, um, hapunan.
Hapunan, right?"

"So it is evening?"

"Forget I said anything." Athena left the lab, leaving the
door open. She always did that.

Abigailreached under her pillow and
brought up the door remote. She pushed close.

Over the past few weeks, Abigailhad noticed subtle changes in Athena's
attitude towards her. She had transformed, in the woman's eyes, from a person
to be threatened to a tool to be used to a companion to be indulged. Athena was
always bringing in food, and changing Abigail's pillows. Sure, they had
arguments, but on the whole Athena seemed to be more concerned that Abigail
remained healthy and well-rested. Or, sometimes she joked, "Fat and
narcoleptic." Athena had gone from savior to blackmailer to partner.

Abigailstared at the ceiling. It was
a high ceiling, so strange for a hospital, but also so unlike a bartolina's. Of
course, in the room and in the bartolina, she both couldn't see the sky. But
here, here she wasn't a prisoner. She thought she had lost everything. Her
country, her freedom. Herself. How ironic that it was in the building of a
weapon of mass destruction that she would find her bearings once more. This...
Mudanjiang Project, had given her structure, direction, purpose, meaning. It
wasn't something she would recommend to everyone. But it wasn't a bad way to
live.

After a few minutes, Athena returned with two bowls of lo mein. She
put hers on the computer table, got out thick towel from the lab's closet, put
the towel on Abigail's stomach and put Abigail's bowl on the towel. "Eat."

They ate, and talked about the translations that Athena brought and
Abigailread. She had been teaching
her a few Filipino words and expressions. Athena mastered the curses first, of
course. Abigail thoroughly enjoyed the meal.

"Hey," she said, "you have something." She
pointed.

Athena raised an eyebrow, then brushed her mouth with the back of
her hand. "Does it remain?"

"There," Abigailsaid, dropping the noodle to the ground.
"You can go back now."

Athena's face hovered an inch away from hers. "Or I could
stay."

"Or you could stay."

"Or I could come closer."

"Or I could." She put Athena's face in her hands and
caressed her cheeks. She pulled her closer, meeting her lips with her lips. The
kiss sent lightning bolts to her eyeballs. She felt she had legs again, a
shiver ran from her toes to her vagina to her brain. When they let go of each
other, she noticed the bowl of lo mein wasn't on her stomach anymore.

Athena slid a finger under her jaw and kissed her on the forehead.
"I'll get the mop." She paused at the door and added,
"Darling."

4. Sixteen months passed. An explosion in the lab singed Athena's
eyebrows off, and an attack on one of China's few remaining secret
pharmaceutical plants delayed Abigail's
leproxy shots for two weeks, costing her her right pinky and middle
finger. But they finished the bomb. Chinese forces immediately put a plan into
action, and seventeen months, three weeks and four days after Athena rescued
Abigail from a thing on a rooftop in Beijing, an attack on one of the
Invaders' key facilities was put into motion.

They made love before Athena left for battle. Abigailfail asleep afterwards. When she awoke she
found a note on her stomach. "I will return."

Two days later a Russian came into the lab carrying a floater.

"Wow. There's an argument for weapons of mass destruction for
you," she said, "No bomb, I don't even have a wheelchair. Bomb, I get
a floater. Isn't rebellion wonderful?" On the floater, she felt complete.

The Russian shrugged, lifted her off the bed and plunked her on the
floater. "The Chancellor awaits you," he said in broken Mandarin.

Abigailwilled the floater to about
two feet above the floor. She followed the Russian outside. The corridors, like
her room, were painted white. "Painted blank is more like it," she
whispered. She thought she saw the Russian's ears move. In silence they took a
left, then a right, then a right and then went straight ahead. They came across
no other human being, on a stacks of what seemed to be boxes, covered by white
sheets. "So, is," she said, "Athena with this Chancellor?"
They stopped at what looked to Abigail like an elevator.

"Enter," the Russian said.

"Enter the Dragon," Abigailsaid, laughing at her own joke. "GodI need to get out more. I wonder who the hellthis Chancellor is."

Before the doors opened the Russian left. Abigailwilled the floater to turn right.
"Hey," she said, "thanks," then willed the floater to turn
left.

"Up, up," Athena's voice called to her.

Abigailsaw stairs. She floated up.
The sight of the moon, with the stars behind it, greeted her. She was floating
inside a giant dome. "Athena?"

"That's Chancellor Tavoittelija to
you." Athena was flanked by two of the things. Their box-feet were on the
floor, and their wings were steady. "Just joking! Come, come," Athena
said, "look, it's the Earth."

Abigaillooked, and saw the Earth.
"Where? Where are we?"

"In China."

"China, China's on Earth."

"It used to be on Earth."

"But--"

"Just a minute, Darling. They're coming."

"Coming? The Invaders?"

"Oh, sweet Abigail, I
can never tell when you are joking. Hush now." Addressing what seemed to
be the air, Athena said, "Viewscreen."

Abigailsaw them. They were
spaceships. But if Athena was with the things then... Whose spaceships
were they? "They're human," she whispered.

"Philippine, actually. The one on the left is Kalayaan,
the one on the right is also Kalayaan and the one in the middle is,
um," she looked to the thing on her left, which leaned closer, "yes,
the one in the middle is Kalayaan too. Or rather, Kalayaan Two."

"Ano?"

"You, Two. Kalayaan One, Two and Three.
I honestly do not understand why you Filipinos are silly about names. The
Chinese, they have more names than things to name. Wait, wait," she waved
her hands, "they've come too far." She motioned to the thing on her
right. It flapped its wings, creating the whirring sound, floated five feet off
the ground and its left box-foot opened.

"Here we go," Athena said, retrieving what looked like a
remote controlfrom inside. It had one big red button in the
middle.

"My bomb," Abigailsaid, floating towards Athena.

Athena pushed the button and Kalayaan One, Two and Three
exploded. "I have to tell you, that shield of theirs, yours, was just good.
But our bomb, or rather your bomb, was just better. That roleplaying,
simulation technique, I did not believe it at first, but you were right. Only
by seeing yourself as like them were you able to defeat them." Athena
grabbed her own breasts. "I have to confess, though, I did not like
carrying these around."

"They were, they were, they weren't Chinese, but they were
human. Where is your conscience?"